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“Classical deterrence theory has long held that the threat of a mild punishment imposed reliably and immediately has a much greater deterrent effect than the threat of a severe punishment that is delayed and uncertain.”
People today want high quality health care at lower cost (to be honest, people throughout history have always wanted better quality and lower cost). However, defining the ‘value’ of medical services is not easy. In fact, it is often difficult for companies to demonstrate to customers that they provide superior value. Joe Paduda has a great post which evaluated who different managed care stakeholders evaluate the healthcare value differently.
Even in health care, value is truly in the eye of the beholder.
Tags: Quality, Value, Workers Comp
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk is up at Colorado Health Insurance Insider.
Tags: CoR
How is the health care labor market in your area? HWS Enterprises put together a gauge of the healthcare workforce labor demand throughout 30 large metropolitan regions in the United States. The results for Q4 are available here. The strongest healthcare labor markets are Sacramento, Riverside, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Dallas. The weakest is New York City. My home, San Francisco, ranked 18th out the 30 large metro areas evaluated.
According to the Health Workforce Solutions’ press release:
The HWS Labor Market Pulse® Index (LMPI) provides a quarterly barometer of local market health care workforce expansion and contraction. Patterned loosely after the Case-Shiller home index and based on a proprietary algorithm, the LMPI identifies and enables comparison of 30 health care labor markets by tracking elements including temporary health workforce shortages and surpluses, facility and bed closures, announced layoffs and expansions, and local economic trends. The LMPI will be published quarterly as part of Labor Market Pulse® and distributed nationally to health care executives, the media and other interested parties.
Tags: Demand, Health Workforce Solutions, HWS, Labor Market Pulse Index
From a letter in Health Affairs:
In 1996 Pfizer came to Kano to administer a test of the drug Trovan for a meningitis outbreak. One hundred children were given Trovan, and another hundred were given chloramphenicol, a drug approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). Of the 200 children, eleven died due to Trovan and low dosages of chloramphenicol, and many others suffered injuries (paralysis, deafness, blindness, brain damage, liver damage, and joint disease) from Trovan. The U.S. Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Trovan for adults in 1997 but severely restricted its use in 1999. Europe banned it outright.
In 2000 a Nigerian report exposed the negative outcomes from this drug trial; in Kano there were street demonstrations and demands for reform. Thirty families sued Pfizer in 2001, and in 2007 the Nigerian and Kano State governments also sued for damages. In February 2009 there was an out-of-court settlement
for a reported $45 million.
This incidentwas on everyone’s mind when WHO personnel showed up in Kano with an American-made vaccine for polio eradication…There was a political dimension to this problem, but people were wary of any medicine from the United States. When Muslim religious leaders stated that the vaccine would sterilize young girls—a terrible outcome like that of Trovan—the program was “boycotted.”
Tags: Links
Megan McArdle broke a story that Jon Gruber, a famous MIT health economist, was paid $300,000 by the Obama Administration for “special studies and analysis” of the health care bills. Did this sway his opinion on the evaluation on endorsing various legislative bills?
I would say no. Dr. Gruber is a well respected health economist who has long supported health reform efforts. He was one the principal advisers for the design of the Massachusetts’ health reform. What I’m trying to say, is that Dr. Gruber likely already had a bias towards health reform and the $300,000 likely did not affect the analysis he would have done if he had not been paid.
I would hope that money would not affect Dr. Gruber’s econometric research whatsoever. What it could influence is his decision to endorse specific bills. Any bill has pros and cons which hopefully Dr. Gruber would uncover unbiasedly in his evaluation. Taken as a whole, however, the money may have helped convince Dr. Gruber to give a more positive tone to the overall bill in interview.
The fact that Dr. Gruber was paid to do research should not appall anyone; a researcher has to earn a living somehow. McArdle’s discovery should not be any sort of a scandal, but it should make the public realize that no academic researchers is ever perfectly unbiased.
Tags: Gruber
Tags: Links
Here are some writing tips from “Writing Economics” by Robert Neugeboren with Mireille Jacobson:
Tags: Writing
Three Cups of Tea
January 9, 2010 in Books | 1 comment
I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea, an interesting book chronicling of an amazing man dedicated towards bringing schools to rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The book describes Greg Mortenson’s single minded purpose and reinforces the saying that the pen is mighter than the sword. In fact, according to one Pakistani Brigadier General, Mortenson’s work can also have an effect on the war on terror.
“Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. You have to attack the source of your enemy’s strength. In America’s case, that’s not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever.”
To donate to Greg Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute, please visit this website.
Tags: Afghanistan, Books, Pakistan, Three Cups of Tea